The Dictator, written in 1969 by Lebanese playwright Issam Mahfouz, has been described as an absurdist classic, a minimalist mixture of Ionesco, Plautus and Beckett, with fierce and frequently hilarious jabs at despotism in the Arab world. A revolutionary work when it was written, it continues to speak to the revolutions and reversals unfolding in today’s Middle East. Lebanon’s The Daily Star has called it “a masterpiece of claustrophobia, an exploration of despotism, delusion, and power fames.”

The Dictator is the story of a tyrant, a mentally disturbed individual under the illusion that he is humanity’s long-awaited savior, and of his comic and unpredictable assistant, Saadoun. The translation, which appears in published form alongside an essay about Syrian dramatist Sa’dallah Mahfouz in the January 2015 edition of PAJ, allows audiences in the English-speaking world access to the theatre of one of the Middle East’s most significant contemporary dramatic voices.

The play received its English language world premiere in a production by Beirut’s Tahweel Ensemble Theatre and AUB’s Theatre Initiative on September 10 and 12, 2015 as a part of the Between the Seas Festival in New York. The English translation was created by Nada Saab and Robert Myers. The director was Sahar Assaf, whose recent works include acclaimed productions of Rituals of Signs and Transformations and The Rape, by Wannous. The Dictator was performed by two of Lebanon’s most gifted young actors, Sany Abdul Baki and Raffi Feghali.